Chapter XX
XX
Ana
Emily is trailing me, spouting encouraging platitudes as I pace the living room of this rental house, back and forth between a linen-covered sofa and built-ins that hold a massive TV I’ve never turned on. “It’s fine. You’re fine. We can figure this out.”
“Nothing about this is fine.” Agitation claws up my throat and puts my voice in a vise grip. Every word comes out like it’s being squeezed through a fist. “Is Levi coming? Please tell me he’s coming.”
“Any minute now. He left as soon as I texted.”
At that moment, the doorbell chimes with a cheerful little ditty. It echoes through the house, bouncing off the walls and windows like a personal affront. Emily runs to answer it.
“Hey, Em,” comes the voice from the front hall. It’s deep and comforting and a bit winded.
A shuffle of shoes being removed and placed by the door buys me one more moment to compose myself.
Levi rounds the corner and finds me stalking back and forth, marking a path in the silk rug. “Hey, sweetheart,” he says, his brows pulled tight.
Emily does jazz hands behind him to get my attention, mouthing, “Sweetheart?!” with wide eyes. I shake my head. Now’s not the time.
Levi steps in front of me, blocking my path, and places two heavy palms on my upper arms. The warmth of him seeps through my shirt and blooms on my skin. It acts like a tether, restraining my panic. I take a deep breath.
“Can we sit?” he asks, even though he’s spinning me around and guiding my shoulders from behind before I have the chance to answer. We drop onto the couch, and I wonder, briefly, how anyone decides linen is the best material with which to upholster a sofa.
“How are you doing?” he asks, as though it’s not abundantly clear by my pacing and breathing and overall demeanor.
“Been better.”
Levi nods and wraps an arm around my waist to pull me into his side. Resting my head on his chest feels easy, natural. My cheek rises and falls with each of his breaths. “Emily said . . .” He rubs his fingers along my hip. “Want to tell me about it?”
“Fucking Deuxmoi got a tip about us. Everyone thinks—everyone knows—we’re pretending.” I tilt my face to meet his eyes, which are soft. Mine are bloodshot.
“I’m sorry, Doo-what now?”
“Oh my God, Levi, it’s a celebrity gossip page. You’re such a farm boy.”
He ignores my dig. “But we’re not pretending, right?”
I clock the way Emily clears her throat and excuses herself from the room, mumbling under her breath about retrieving a dress from the seamstress. She holds my eye contact for a beat before turning into the hallway. You’ll be fine, her look says. You always are.
I have no such confidence.
“Was I wrong to think we agreed last week at the Finch that something real is growing here? Maybe we should keep showing up like we enjoy spending time together—because we do—and wait for people to move on to their next conspiracy theory.”
“They might move on, but people don’t forget. They think I’m a liar, and in a few days’ time they’ll corroborate the story somehow, and there will be another round of ‘Manipulative Ana Barlow’ headlines.”
“Hey, slow down.” Levi glides his hand down the length of my arm. This time, it does nothing to calm my racing heart or stifle the words flying out of my mouth.
“And then there’s the same old shit about me being vain and controlling.
Of course, Colt gets to do whatever he wants, and everyone fawns over him.
I work out, and I’m a show-off; Colt’s an arrogant asshole who’s high on his own supply, and he’s a hero.
Rinse and repeat every fucking news cycle.
For once, I’d like him to be on the other side.
Maybe that makes me a bitch, but I can’t will myself to care. ”
“You’re not—” Levi pauses, fills his lungs, and holds for a beat before releasing. His fingers drum staccato on my arm.
“What?” I ask.
He clenches his hands into fists but doesn’t respond.
“What is it? Please, just say it.”
The nervous energy in his hands spills out of his lips: “Colt’s a piece of shit, honestly.”
“Believe me, I know that.”
Levi pulls a face, like the words cause him physical pain. “No, he’s been a piece of shit to you.”
He runs his hand through his hair, that anxious tick betraying him just before his mouth does. “He told me he tried to get you off the film.” The lines on his face deepen. “When the story broke in the Star, he asked Francesca directly to fire you.”
My heart stops. The world freezes, and his words hang in the air, suspended and swirling while everything else stays motionless. After a moment, I blink myself back into my body and turn to face him.
The swirling begins again. Heat floods my chest, my face, my knuckles. At first, it’s embarrassment, but it shifts quickly into anger.
Anger at Colt.
Anger at being a pawn.
Anger at the backstabbing.
Anger at Levi.
“Wait. Back up. You knew he’d tried to get me fired and didn’t tell me?” I stand up from the couch and resume my trail on the carpet. “This is a joke, right? You’re joking.”
“I thought maybe you already knew, and if you didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing you any favors by telling you. But whether or not you knew, what would you have done differently? Ana, you kept the role. You kept the press at bay, just like you wanted. Isn’t that what’s important?”
He leans forward with his forearms on his thighs, his hands clasped. He ought to drop his head between his knees in shame while he’s at it.
“So you decided I didn’t deserve to know that my co-star tried to ruin my career?” I seethe. “That ignorance is bliss, or some shit? I can’t believe this.”
“What was the alternative?” His voice is steely behind clenched teeth.
“I tell you something I heard—a plan that didn’t actually happen—for what?
I was trying to protect your feelings, and listen, I only decided to tell you now because you need to know that he’s been a bitch, not you.
At the end of the day, his plan didn’t work. Your plan did. That’s what matters.”
That’s what matters. Are the words Levi’s or Roy’s?
Levi’s rant brings me back in time, to my mom’s kitchen table fourteen years earlier, until I feel the hard back of a wooden chair bruising my spine and I see my former agent’s face, his lips forming the words, across from me.
Both him and my mother trying to convince me that what they did—what they kept from me—wasn’t a big deal and how the ends justify the means and I came out ahead, didn’t I?
Sticky sweat rises on my neck, the same as it did that day, and I feel the same roiling, churning in my stomach.
I stop marching and stand in front of Levi, the person who I thought was showing me, day after day, that I could trust him.
What a sucker I am.
“You had the choice,” I say, resentment clinging to each word, “between being honest with me and protecting your prospects. I’m not dumb, Levi.
I know what we’re doing here. I suggested that this arrangement could be mutually beneficial for our careers, so let me be clear: I’m not upset that you were trying to get ahead by playing your cards right.
It’s that you were willing to do it at my expense.
I asked you to play this game with me so I could maintain control over just one piece of my life.
Withholding something like this from me?
That’s you taking control, and that wasn’t the deal. ”
I run my tongue over my teeth and swallow against a dry throat. He’s looking at me, and I want him to fight. Fight with me. Fight for me.
“You’re right,” is all he says.
“That’s it? You’re right?” I scoff. “God, you don’t get it.
I told you about my mom, Levi. About Roy.
About how crushing it was to learn that they were making decisions behind my back and then turning around and claiming I was better off not knowing.
In reality, they kept things from me because it benefited them. Sound familiar?”
“I’m not your mom and Roy.” He drags his eyes up to meet my gaze before darting them back to study his hands.
“I’m not, and you know it. It was a passing remark that Colt made, without any context, and you kept the role, so why bring it up?
I didn’t want to make you upset, and I didn’t want to risk messing things up. With Colt or with you. That’s all.”
“And yet here we are, and I’m upset, and you’ve messed things up with me anyway.”
He nods, and his lack of response whips the churning in my belly into a cyclone—a wind shear of anger, sudden and forceful.
If I took a minute to breathe, or think, or ground my feet on the earth, I’d wonder if I’m overreacting.
But I can’t. Instead, the words punch out of my mouth.
“All I’ve ever wanted—needed—is for someone to choose me.
Not beautiful Ana Barlow, not famous and thin and wrapped in designer clothes Ana Barlow, but the version you’d been uncovering.
You had her. I gave that version of myself to you, and I was stupid enough to believe I could trust you to hold it.
I thought we were a team, and I was wrong.
Because you don’t care about me—people who care tell each other things like this.
Instead, you wanted a stepping stone and were content to put your foot on my neck to give yourself a leg up. Just like everyone else.”
He sits there, wringing his hands. Dark eyebrows pinched in toward his nose. Lips pulled together. No hint of the dimple I love—loved—on his cheek. He clears his throat and swallows. My gaze traces it down the column of his neck.
“Where do we go from here?” he asks, as though we’re business partners building a road map for our quarterly goals. As though he didn’t just break my heart.
“There’s no need to pretend anymore. They outed us.” I release a petulant huff. “Turns out I can’t even fake my way to being beloved by the public. Should’ve left you out of it and saved myself all this mess.”
“Ana, we don’t have to . . .”
“Don’t have to what, Levi?” I bring my hands to my neck, to the chronic pain that lives there.
“Forget it, I’m sorry.” He gets up from the couch and heads for the door. I follow him there, and he turns to me. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You and the rest of them.”
He winces at the words. “Can we keep things normal at work?”
“Yes, Levi, I can be professional at my place of employment. I’ve spent two decades pretending to feel what I don’t feel and pretending not to feel what I do. This won’t be any different.”
He nods.
“Oh, and I’m not going to jeopardize your standing with Colt, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It wasn’t.” He slips on his shoes, bending to tie the laces and splaying the muscles in his shoulders and back. Damn stuntman build.
“See you on set.” I open the door and gesture for his exit.
“See you,” he says, and he steps across the threshold.